NASA to reveal contents of drilled Martian rock
Curiosity drilled into its first Martian rock a month ago. Now scientists will reveal what's inside.
Gathering at NASA headquarters Tuesday, the rover team will detail the minerals and chemicals present in a gray pinch of ground-up rock.
Mars rover Curiosity: Images from the Red Planet
The rock results come seven months after Curiosity made a dramatic landing in an ancient crater near the equator. It has been slow going since then as engineers learn to handle the car-size rover.
Scientists are thrilled with the latest achievement - a first on Mars. It involved boring a hole, scooping the powder and running it through Curiosity's instruments.
By analyzing the rock's interior, researchers hope to determine whether the landing spot was habitable. They already have one hint - an ancient streambed that Curiosity crossed to get to the rock.
Popular in SciTech
- Calif. teen wins Intel Science Research competition Play Video
- The 7 weirdest things made by 3D printing
- NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400
- New Flickr comes with 1 terabyte free storage
- Computer visionary says he knows who invented Bitcoin
- Microsoft's new Xbox: What to expect, where to watch
- One woman's journey to save the white lions
- Alternatives to Google Reader
3 Comments Add a Comment
- linkicon reporticon emailicon
- News Flash. NASA just revealed what is in the martian rock, and it is "dirt".
- reply
- linkicon reporticon emailicon
- NASA should check into hospitals for full surgical lobotomies to relieve their symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia like hallucinations and delusions. Liquor-induced psychosis could be treated by scalpel or laser surgery on the brain. Congress would have an opportunity to decrease NASA's corpulent budget.
- reply
-
- linkicon reporticon emailicon
- Wow. But, I bet you can't tell me what NASA's budget is without looking it up.
